STRATEGIC ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT–THE U.C. EXAMPLE

Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) is a comprehensive process designed to assist institutions in achieving and maintaining the optimum recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of students, where “optimum” is defined with the academic context of the institution. As such, SEM is an institution-wide process that embraces virtually every aspect of the institution’s function and culture. There is no magic formula for implementing SEM. Indeed, each institution’s implementation will be shaped by its unique needs and academic context. Since 1998 the University of Cincinnati, a state-supported research 1 institution, has pursued a total commitment to SEM. Progress to date has been shaped largely by the recognition of the need for close collaboration between the student affairs and academic sectors of the institution and by the increasing importance of the role of information technology (IT) in the classroom. The convergence of IT and SEM as separate but interrelated dynamic components of higher education has produced both a wealth of new thinking about teaching strategies and a host of unforeseen issues whose resolution promises to reshape the character of higher education itself. Mobilizing faculty to improve the success rate of first year student by bringing administration, faculty, and student services personnel into a community of shared interests is a principal goal of SEM. At issue are questions of curriculum, assessment, advising, and faculty reward systems. Skepticism among faculty was widespread at first but has gradually diminished as the opportunities for professional development, particularly in the use of IT, became increasingly available. Preliminary results show that not only are faculty and student affairs professionals beginning to talk to each other about common problems, but those faculty who serve as the principal interface between first year students and the larger institution have become increasingly sensitized to the enormous range of issues confronting these students.